Persona, Yahoo and Aging Browsers

20Aug

Thanks to Mozilla’s new Persona service, we are now able to offer an easy sign-in process for Yahoo and other 3rd party email address holders. Persona allows one-step sign-in to many websites without additional registration efforts.

Changes

Login with your Yahoo account using Mozilla’s Persona service.

Login with any email address account, not just Yahoo’s, with Persona service.

Filters button on mobile site now compatible with browsers that have minimal javascript support.

We received great feedback from users from devices with out-dated browsers and here is our official stance regarding mobile browser support:

Nintendo DS(ixl) devices will not be officially supported. The mobile site might work on these devices but we will not put our engineering efforts to support them specifically. The custom “opera” browser on DS(ixl) has not been updated since 2009. Direct your feedback at Nintendo for failing to update their browser for 4+ years. 3DS and WiiU browsers are supported as they use a different and much newer browser.

Blackberry (pre-10 series) devices will not be officially supported. Please visit http://m.opera.com to get a supported browser.

Flip phones, Nokias (symbian os), and other non-smartphone devices will only be supported via the free Opera Mini browser available at http://m.opera.com.

It would be wonderful if we can support every browser platform but it is resource prohibitive. We pride ourselves on compatibility but there is a limit to what we can do.

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153 responses to “Persona, Yahoo and Aging Browsers”

Lurker

08/20/2013 at 5:35 pm

So, in the end, the wringers really need to stop complaining to ffnet over DSi, since it’s on Nintendo, not ffnet staffs. I kind of figured that was the case, considering the compatibility does go both ways.

Please, for the goodness sake, do not blame the staffs!

Go complain to Nintendo instead.

It’s not really fun to see the repeated episode of the same ol’ crying and bitching. No one really like a rerun. I would like to see more suggestions on how to improve ffnet and whatnot and have discussions on that.

On another subject…what exactly is that feature ffnet mentioned few times before? I’m still curious on that.

I would like to respectfully ask that you retract the change you made on the website that changes the numbers of fics in a fandom to vague numbers represented only by ‘K’. In smaller fandoms, it is now incredibly difficult to tell if the number of fics has increased or not. Please go back to using the proper counters for fic numbers.

Yes I agree too how going back to the old way. That was the only way I could tell that the number had gone up. Now instead have to go into the whatever tv show or withers to see what the numbers are now.

And for smaller fandoms, just bookmark the LIST of stories, and check on it every now and then.

I’ve always done that, as it’s more reliable than numbers (since some people tend to delete fanfics; you can’t see that from a number).

cathy massey

08/22/2013 at 6:53 am

I’ve often seen numbers drop when a fic is deleted. Sometimes it seems to mean that a story is down for work or for addition, sometimes we’ve lost a story. One very small & quite fandom, for a 45 year old overseas show, recently went from 85 to 83.

Bookmarking works when it’s your own machine, but I go on whichever break room or library one is available to me.

During my morning and afternoon breaks, I just take a quick look down the columns to see by the numbers if any new stuff has been posted. If so, I try to take the time to print it in the afternoon to read on my commute.

With these generalized round-offs, it takes too long to click on each of my fandoms, check the K thru T, filter to M & check there, then repeat for crossovers. Other than ratings, I never take the time for the filters or for a log-on of my own.

anonlulz

08/30/2013 at 12:37 am

Browser sync, pendrive browser, text file with links… There’s so many alternatives I could bore you. And I’ve used them all when I didn’t have a computer, and had to rely on friends and cyber shops.

You couldn’t PAY ME to use adblock plus. I tried them once before and they literally sucked. I have since gotten AdBlock from getadblock.com and I love it. Wouldn’t switch to another ad blocker if you paid me.

anonlulz

08/30/2013 at 12:38 am

LMAO. Loser.

Brian Runyon

08/20/2013 at 7:28 pm

Good for them. Meanwhile, there’s still some bugs that you could see about fixint as soon as you can so I can use the filters the right way and please put adblocker back whre it belongs.

Text: I would like to request a category for X (source: usually a wikipedia link or some other website), to go in the site’s “y” section (y being books/games/insert category here). In addition, I would like to request the following characters for said category:

a (source: making source as specific to that character’s existence as possible, usually on a wikia site or media’s homepage if it exists)

b (source: repeat process)

Thanks.

Obviously there’s variations – I may just be requesting character categories for a pre-existing section, or world categories. And admittedly, I’m the type of person who tries to branch out as much as possible and write for really obscure medias in the process, so I get that such requests may have to be prioritized. Yet the irritation remains. Sometimes, I request categories, but don’t get responses, but they’re implemented anyway (e.g. ‘Oblivion’ – never recieved an answer for my first request, was apparently granted at some point, only without the character list I’d submitted implemented, similar thing happened with ‘Prometheus’). There was one time where I requested world categories, they were placed as character categories, and the issue still hasn’t been corrected despite me explaining that they were worlds I was requesting, not characters. It irritates me when on one hand the site is happy to create the category for ‘The Last of Us’ over a year before the game came out (as per my request), yet when I make the same request for ‘Destiny’, I’m told to wait until it’s release before requesting said category, then switch around again when I request a category and characters for ‘WildStar,’ then ceases to respond at all. And after sourcing every character for ‘Dawngate’ (another recent request that went unanswered), that’s a lot of time wasted.

I know it’s probably not on the site’s list of priorities, and the old support link no longer appears on the main page either. But if I could make one personal request, it would be to formalize a request system – if the site doesn’t want certain requests at certain times, fine. If it wants me to have a larger no. of fics ready to place in said category before requesting it, fine. But let me know the parameters before I spend time sourcing every character of a media, submitting it as a detailed request, and never getting a response.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now. :(

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 5:48 am

Try sending it with just [category].

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 1:37 am

Requests should be simple and to the point. The category or character names SHOULD NOT be within the text (which is unnecessary).

Examples of successful requests:

“Category request for:

[CATEGORY]

Source: Wikipedia article / IMDB / bookstore / official website”

“Characters request for:

[CATEGORY]:

John D.
Jane D.
Blah W.
Dobby

Source: Wikipedia article / IMDB / bookstore / official website”

I never sent them “sources”, though. And they added both categories and characters within days, and never asked me for more info.

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 1:55 am

I wonder how many people they have working for this, and how much they’re paid.

They also have to verify that the reports are valid and not just a couple of tween girls not being friends anymore and reporting each other out of spite.

They also can’t trust users working for free, since there’s always bias.

I’m not saying bias doesn’t exist, but that is also true on the part of any human being, regardless of paygrade. Volunteers can be trusted, as long as they’re vetted. To say that they can’t be is very insulting to anyone who files a report.

Xing has been provided my ideas in e-mail. He has not responded. I can therefore conclude he didn’t like the suggestions I made.

About how many I have no idea, but A03, Wattpad, TWCS, Deviant Art, and Live Journal all seem to have processes and people in place to do this function. And quickly.

Take a look at The Plagiarism Report on FFn. There are serial plagiarist on FFn who are monitored because they love getting attention from putting up other peoples FF work.

There is one young tween (and I hope she’s a tween and not an adult) that has been getting reported since Jun (for her most current theft) for taking other peoples work and posting as her own. People have politely asked her to take it down, and she has cussed them out in PM saying she can do whatever she wants. FFn has been getting hundreds of reports via email and review function, and nothing is done. And this is just one person.

If they (FFn) are going to run a site like this, they need to have a process in place, either being paid or free. Eventually they are going to be subject to a lawsuit for failing to take action, esp when true copyrighted work is involved

anonlulz

08/30/2013 at 12:53 am

A lawsuit from whom, genius? The author of a fanfic? You’re joking, right?

As for the rest, I was talking about the hypothetical employees that would be working on processing the reports. If they “employed” volunteers, etc.

Way to completely miss the point.

Feith

08/20/2013 at 9:17 pm

You guys are sending conflicting messages. You guys said in the post before this that “…mobile support for 3DS broswers has been removed from the site…” And yet, in this post you guys say that “3DS and WiiU browsers are supported as they use a different and much newer browser.” Which one is true, and which is false?

Also, on the mobile version of ff-net, there seems to be a bug with the filters. When switching the ratings filter to “All” and clicking/tapping “Go”, the site outputs an error. I sent a copy to the support staff, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be seen with all the other stuff that is no doubt being sent to support hourly.

I have had the same problem! It’s really beginning to irritate me. I really hope that the admins do something about it within the next few days or else it will be impossible for me to be able to do anything beyond check my account for story updates until the bug is fixed.

I haven’t heard anything about users having trouble logging in, but thank you for fixing that! I suppose that using a single account really helps those who have trouble remembering passwords… lol
And thank you for fixing the filter button as well! I’m not sure if it’s because of my browser or not, but it works now!

I don’t understand why everyone is so annoyed at these filters. There is a clearly labeled ‘without’ option without two slots at the bottom of the filtering. It works just like the old filtering system, except with more characters. I literally do not understand why everyone is so PO’d about this.

@Ami – I’m with you, but apparently the reason why pairings fans are outraged is because those two slots in the “without” section only allow them to select two characters to exclude, when what they want is to block out every character except the pairing they want to read about.

That’s why a suggestion has been made to include a “no other character” or “void” option within the four character search space, as a compromise which would help everyone. No word from the admins yet as to whether that will happen. But I hope it does, and soon, because the fanbrats are getting quite abusive about it.

But…I mean, it works the same way the old filtering system works. If the shippers want romantic stuff, they just click the ‘romance’ filtering option. Like…this isn’t hard?

but the ‘no other character’ is a good idea, I guess, even for gen stuff.

Simoneau

08/21/2013 at 2:07 am

You’d think it would be that easy, but apparently not :)

ShikiKira

08/21/2013 at 4:26 am

@Ami: You can blame some authors for why there so many complaints for the pairing readers. You would think the two slots for the without option is enough, but no it definitely isn’t. For romance readers, there are too many other popular characters being put into slots along with characters they choose. This makes it extremely difficult for romance readers to find stories featuring their chosen couple.

If we use the romance filter, we still get stories with the characters we want, but they are no longer the pairing we wanted. Even when we do select the two most likely characters to be paired alongside our character choices in the without option, we still have other characters that we do not want to see along side them.

For example, in the Inuyasha category, I want to read romance stories between Kagome and Sesshomaru. Normally, I would get stories that only featuring those two characters, but because of the current selections in the filters I won’t just get Sesshomaru/Kagome stories, but also Sesshomaru/Kagura, Inuyahsa/Kagome, Sesshomaru/Rin, Inutaisho/Kagome, and etcetera. The two most popular pairings outside of my chosen characters are Sesshomaru/Kagura and Inuyasha/Kagome. When redo the search with Kagura and Inuyasha in the without filter, I will still get stories that Sesshomaru/Rin, Inutaisho/Kagome, and etcetera.

Romance readers don’t want that, and most of us are very much hoping for the “all other characters” option to be added to the without filter to correct this.

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 5:35 am

… I won’t just get Sesshomaru/Kagome stories…

That in itself is the problem that the romance fans have. They don’t want to see other stories. Thing is, there is nothing wrong with seeing other stories mixed in with your searches. Seeing the stories isn’t the same as making you read said stories.

TVJunkie199

08/21/2013 at 8:20 am

@Simoneau – Your explanation of the problem is really misleading. It’s also not limited to “pairing fans.”

Before, if you filtered for fic starring a particular character, most of the stories in the results did feature that character as a major player. And when most of the stories in the results match what you are looking for, it doesn’t take long to find a story you’ll like.

Now, when you filter for one character, you get any and every story tagged with that character, even if they are barely in the story (and, thus, not the star).

I filtered the Star Wars archive for fic starring Luke. In 48% of the stories on the first page, Luke wasn’t the star. In fact, in some of the stories, he didn’t even actually appear.

So now, it takes longer to find a fic you’ll like because you have to slog through a lot of stories that have nothing to do with what you were looking for in the first place.

I like it that FF.Net tries to make improvements. But, for a lot of people, the way filters work now hasn’t been an improvement, which is all we’ve been trying to say.

They don’t want to see other stories. Thing is, there is nothing wrong with seeing other stories mixed in with your searches. Seeing the stories isn’t the same as making you read said stories.

This makes it sound like the problem is just people not wanting to see the summaries for certain stories. Well that’s not the case for me and many others. Even when the filters worked the way I liked, I saw summaries for stories I wasn’t interested in all the time. (For example, most pairing fic doesn’t interest me, personally.)

My issue is that finding a story I want to read is harder and takes longer because I have to go through so many stories that have nothing to do with what I was trying to use the filter to find. Simple really.

But I get the feeling you know that. You’ve read and responded to enough comments about the filter that, if you still really don’t get it, that has to be because you don’t want to get it. Not getting it, and putting your own spin on what people are saying, seems to line up better with your own thoughts and opinions than truly trying to understand where other people are coming from.

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 6:55 pm

@ TVJunkie199 ~ My disagreeing with you and the other people has nothing to do with me not understanding. I’ll state again that the filter system was never supposed to bring back results with the high levels of precision many of you and the others are claiming it should have. That percentage you’re quoting is also supposed to be the high percentage wise for the standard when you’re looking for stories that are character-centric around one character.

What I see is people complaining because the filter system is no longer biased in their favor.

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 12:48 am

Agreed, Ami.

I read both pairing and gen fic, and I do what I’ve always done: ignore fics I’m not interested in.

The majority of people seem to heavily dislike the new changes to the site, but there are some who seem to like it. I suggest putting up a poll or something and having people saying if they like it or not. If you see many people do not, change it back. And by the way, I have a blackberry phone and a DSi, and now I can’t really use either, so thanks a lot. I know the DSi not working isn’t all your fault, though, so I won’t blame y’all to much, but I cant use my phone. -____-

There has been discussion about whether the site admins should do polls or not and a lot of people came to the conclusion that if a person really wanted to they could throw any poll into their favor whether it be the positive or negative side.

I would very much like to be able to search for stories that don’t have any of the character fields filled. This was the old way of denoting an ensemble cast, and for stories that focus on the full cast, it’s still the proper way to tag it.

Is it possible to return to the old filter? It does not work when I press ‘Go’ or a few other buttons, as oppose to the old one that worked perfectly fine. I would appreciate it very much. Also, the ‘More’ button does not work on my phone. Nor can I review, as the review button does not allow me to.

Could we please add an “All Other Characters” option in the without filter? Romance readers (and I’m speaking only for myself) don’t want to search for stories containing their two chosen characters and then not having their chosen characters be paired up together.

I know the filters are not for pairings, so shut up about that. Even with the romance tag and the current without filter, it is not enough to be able to read stories that focuses solely on the two characters of our choice.

An “All Other Character: option in the without filter will save a considerable amount of time both general readers, romance readers, and all other genre readers.

Oh, and please bring back the raw number count of stories in categories. Most of use them to know whether or not our fandom has a new story added to it or not. Also please bring back the option to sort alphabetically. Better yet, could you make that the default again. Defaulting to categories by popularity was not your best idea, at least in my opinion.

Even with the romance tag and the current without filter, it is not enough to be able to read stories that focuses solely on the two characters of our choice.

Yes, it actually is. Seeing a few fanfics mixed in here and there isn’t the end of the world and isn’t stopping people from reading what they want to read. The numbers I’ve been seeing have ranged from one to five at most. This includes the pairing you mentioned in an earlier comment.

Actually, as has been pointed out, the without filter causes other problems in this situation. Note I specified this situation. If you want a fic where the main characters are…Jack and Thomas, and you put Martin in the without filter because you can’t stand him as a main character, then many Jack and Thomas fics won’t show up because Martin was there are a lesser character in one of the other slots. Yes, this is maybe because the author didn’t tag right, but we’ll never know.

There is a problem with the 4 character slots. I’m not saying to go back to the 2 character slots, but some change has to be done. Yes, I fully agree that there were other problems with the 2 character slots. However, there was not such a large amount of chaos about them. Not enough to generate thousands of comments, with a large portion against. Not that I’ve seen. If so, point me to the appropriate entries.

Also, the last time I checked we are all free. Free to read the kinds of stories we want. Free to like or dislike the characters. Free to not have others tell us, or actually as you said in a previous post, FORCE us to read things we don’t want to at a particular time. Free to give our views and opinions.

Isn’t the POINT of filters to find the stories we want? Wouldn’t the outcry be as big (or bigger) if you filtered by review and there was even a small handful of stories in there that were by number of followers? Same difference.

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 6:49 am

@ Danae ~ The first thing I’m going to say is every time I’ve searched for two characters and simply added the romance genre in I’ve had no problems what-so-ever in finding plenty of stories for particular ships.

The second thing I’m going to say is there is a difference between actually not being able to find what you want and complaining about the fact you’re still able to find the stuff you want with a few things mixed in.

The third thing I’m going to say is while it is true that the filter system is meant to find what you want, it isn’t meant to find only what you want and nothing else. Certain people got overly used to the fact they used to be able to find only what they want that now they’re throwing a fit because its not the same.

By the way, I didn’t even mention without filters this time, that was someone else. The search I did recently… I only found one to three stories outside of the ship depending on whether I included the M rating or not. That was just with the two characters and using the romance tag.

What I and other people aren’t understanding is why people are getting upset about numbers this small.

I was not talking about romance or ships or anything else. I was simply pointing out that the without filter does not work as might be wanted to in this situation. I answered your post as a follow through with the previous post, it’s all tied together. She spoke about the without filter, you followed through on that, I followed on that. I did not single you out at all, except that you were the last post in that sequence. Obviously a mistake on my part.

Filters are not supposed to find what we want? So if I want to filter for a genfic/friendship story of over 20k words that is complete, then it is perfectly normal to get other stories mixed in there of history/angst of 1500 words? No, definitely not.

Example. I used to search for mentor fics in Harry Potter, where Severus Snape would take care of Harry Potter, either as a young child, or older, either as his teacher, or it was discovered he was the father. Whatever the context, SS taking care of HP was my ‘thing’ for that period of time. Not slash (although I’m opposed, that wasn’t my focus). At the time, when searching, I had to sift through stories of slash and my preferred “Severitis” or what have you. Fine, I understood that. The point is the stories that showed up were all Harry Potter/Severus Snape as the major characters. A very few, I’m talking handful, were Harry/some character or Snape/whoever but out of 12 pages, that is negligible. I agree, no use kicking up a fuss about that small a number. I never did. They were never changed by the author either.

Now, if I use the exact same filters as I did at the time, I will get stories that are about Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley; or Severus Snape/Hermione Granger; or Severus Snape/Remus Lupin, and nothing at all to do with what I wanted. Not just 2 or 3 either. Whatever characters were put in to the other slots, can be there. In a large fandom like Harry Potter, the other fics that can show up are staggering. As more and more authors add stories and fill in the 2 extra character slots, the problem will increase almost exponentially. Not just this fandom either.

How can this be made better while keeping the 4 slots? I can freely admit I have no idea. Some good ideas have been put forth, whether they are feasible, or would not cause a host of other problems, no idea either. All I know is that the without filter wouldn’t help — in this situation (Just to point out that I LOVE the without filter and this a few more options would be beneficial. It just doesn’t work as you say in these situations). If I use ‘without romance’ it will take away some (very good) Severitis fics where a romance between SS and a wife is an integral part of the story without being ‘main’. Yes, it might be mis-tagged but it would still not show up for us to know.

I know you find some inconsequential item in my post to nitpick about and completely ignore the points I’m trying to make, so I’m done.

C2s come to mind right away. If there isn’t a Severitis C2, it sounds like making one would be a good thing.

But C2s don’t and shouldn’t cover for the shortcomings of the system itself.

With my own fiddling I’ve found places where the new system is both a blessing and a curse now that I’ve set aside time to hunt and experiment with it all. The conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s not flexible enough.

As brought up numerous times, a voiding filter could be nice. But how exactly would this work? What exact results are we expecting? What about when we search for a threesome, how would the voiding differentiate? We need to communicate these, and not just what it is doing and how much we hate it. We should know about this; we’re writers, and we deal with both constructive and destructive criticism regularly.

And I am putting together my own post on what I think the new filters could potentially do, but it’s taking a great deal of both thought and time on my part. I would like to see other people pitch in for the cause too, though. The more minds working at it, the better. We might come up with something cool and easier to use.

And to be frank, the character filter is not the only one with these short comings. Ever try to search one and only one genre? Doesn’t work does it? Heh.

Sora

08/21/2013 at 2:23 pm

Not if you are looking for one sole character. For example, I love reading stories about Death the Kid in Soul Eater. I don’t care to read about him being paired with Black Star, or Liz or Patti, nor do I want to read things where he is paired with Chrona or Maka.. I just want a good Death the Kid fic without all the other characters blundering it up. But because there is only two character slots in the without section, it becomes a problem. I don’t mind seeing other “possible” reads, just not when it is something I don’t lean towards. So a void of other characters option would be good for us “non-pairing” lookers.

But I can also see the pairing lovers problems in this matter. Let’s say you are looking for a rare pairing like.. PitchxJamie in the Rise of the Guardians archive. You put in two characters you do not wish to see, but you still end up with other pairings that drown out what you are really looking for. Much like how RPing in the comment box at Pottermore drowns out others conversation. It’s annoying, and can get on your nerves when you have to shift through the lot to find what you lean towards.

However, when it comes to a bigger pairing like Percabeth or the Hollarty stuff in Artemis Fowl, there is no problems in it being drowned out for it is the one that drowns out all the rest. The only problems anyone should have with it is how OOC and bad it is written.

So it is a 50 50 thing here. It wouldn’t hurt for the admins to add the void option, nor would it be a killer if they didn’t. Extremely annoying, yes, but not an absolute killer.

TVJunkie199

08/21/2013 at 3:06 pm

@seila – I’ve actually played around with the filters quite a bit. And a lot of the problems I’m seeing are things someone won’t see unless they actually test for themselves. So some people are using the filters a certain way, and thinking the filter is doing exactly what they want when it’s really not.

For example, I filtered the Harry Potter archive for fic starring Snape. (I don’t read much HP, but wanted to see how things worked on a big fandom with lots of characters.) After some looking, I found a fic in which Snape was the actual star, even though it was tagged with three other characters. So then I used the “without” filter to exclued one of the characters who, despite being listed on that fic, seemed to have a pretty small role in the story.

And, suddenly, that Snape-centric fic was nowhere to be seen. Because, as far as the filter knew, I didn’t want to see any stories tagged with that character, even if their role in the story was actually pretty small. After all, the filter can’t tell how big a character’s role in a story is. It can only go by the tags.

But this is something someone who didn’t purposefully do what I did might never realize. All they know is that they aren’t seeing stories starring the excluded character, which is why the used the filter. They wouldn’t know that some stories they’d want to see are being left out too.

seila

08/21/2013 at 4:48 pm

Monster post incoming. And I didn’t even cover everything. :/

Right. Anyways.

@TVJunkie I don’t roam Harry Potter very much either, but that category is. . . unique. When community interests grow even a fraction of the size, so many little “culture” bits appear. I feel like I need an encyclopedia sometimes.

The filters are very, very particular. The Snape experiment is an interesting observation.

I think the void business is a bit more complicated than just the “add this” attitude we’ve taken. Hence why I hadn’t really posted much on the matter yet. With the way things are behaving right now, this voiding thing could absolutely not act as a character. It would need separate programming. Cause if we just stuck in a void character, then all sorts of issues would pop up (like the Snape experiment, but much worse). This sort of relates to the system not accepting double tags.

No matter how many times a reader slots “Snape” he won’t take an inch more precedence than if he’d been slotted once. With as many slots as we have, some form of priority seems needed to balance things out. It could be double, triple, or quadruple slotting, but I don’t particularly like that idea. It seems messy and not self-explanatory at all.

Perhaps the filters could have priority sensitivity built into them. Slot 1 is more important than slot 2, etc. In this case results could appear in an order of relevance. Now the big question is what will the results look like in an ideal world? If I search “Snape, Harry, Hermione” in that exact order, how about if the top results all have “Snape, Harry, Hermione” in that same precise order. Should by the fifteenth page I start seeing “Hermione, Harry, Snape” or “Harry, Ginny, Snape, Hermione”? What do we want to see?

And then things get even more interesting with voiding. Voiding should definitely be optional and not the default setting for an empty slot.

Also, Sora brought up another good point. Support on the voiding should extend to at least 3 slots so that we can find those single character centric stories. Right now, they’re falling by the wayside.

On a related note, right now there is no support for true ensemble casts. There are also plenty of niche stories that do fun or cute little things like go through the rainbow and relate a color to a character in each chapter. There is no main character, and slotting everyone is not the appropriate solution. In this case, would it be better for the story to be tagged as a void all?

Nulling each slot sounds a bit cumbersome though. Check boxes?

Maybe one of these character tags could be converted into a “main” character tag. Just one main. I mean it. In this case, the other tags should stay as ordinary character slots.

And I would love for something like this to work with genre as well.

A parting bit of trivia: the “general” genre became invisible a couple years ago, but was not always so.

seila

08/21/2013 at 6:29 pm

Graah, I missed a key point to that essay.

If there were to be a character priority, in order to function I’m fairly certain it would have to be an entirely separate sorting system. As in, it would be an option you select in the same menu you find the sort by update, publishing date, and such.

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 6:31 pm

The conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s not flexible enough.

Thing is the filter system was even less flexible then it is now. Some people though didn’t realize this I think until the addition of two more character tags because they weren’t effected and always got very high results for everything they searched for. I’ve been on both sides where I was able to find only the stories I wanted and other times when I struggled quite a lot to find stories I wanted as well.

When I first started browsing the site it was a lot easier to find what I wanted, but then we didn’t have the problem where ship fic writers tagged their stories with the pairing rather then the main characters. Many times I went in expecting the characters in the pairing to have bigger roles then they did only to find this isn’t always true anymore. I also like family orientated stories and struggled to find these in some of the places where the two characters were heavily shipped. There are many, many things that I’m able to find now… though I can see how the rarer pairings suffer.

The way a void filter would work… at least this is the way I would go about it… is it would count the number of filters each story uses. A story with only one character filter would have a denominator of 1, two would have 2, three would have 3 and four would have 4. The filter system would then measure the number of characters the person put into the filters and remove all stories except for the corresponding number. It would then proceed to look through the stories for the characters wanted, eliminating the ones that don’t match. Of course… from what I’ve just said should make it clear any void system would take time for the site admins to program and implement. It wouldn’t be easy coding at all and they may have to fix some bugs depending on the fandom.

So yes… it wouldn’t be as simple as adding a relationship type filter. That will likely come first. I think there was another suggestion made… I can’t remember off the top of my head… that the site admins can implement sooner to eliminate the problem.

bienfait

08/21/2013 at 6:32 pm

@Seila – your idea of prioritising the character fields is interesting, but if I understand it properly it may not work in all cases. I write genfic, and a lot of my stories feature two or three characters whose importance is pretty well equal. I usually just list them in random order, because none of them are the main one, so it really doesn’t matter.

If the fields are prioritised in order, it’s going to be problematic as far as my stories are concerned, because some readers searching for, let’s say, Fozzie Bear in the first field may not find him because I listed The Great Gonzo there, and Fozzie second. It’s also going to mean that readers searching for, say, all available “Floyd and Animal” stories would have to search twice – once for Floyd plus Animal, and again for Animal plus Floyd. Fans looking for three characters (eg Kermit plus Piggy plus Annie Sue) would be faced with six searches, to cover all the various permutations; and for four characters (if anyone’s so obsessive as to be searching for four specific names) the number of individual searches is…well, I’m not good at math, but lots.

(BTW, no, I’m not writing Muppet Show – that’s just an example :D)
There’s also a technical problem in some fandoms, apparently, which causes the order of listed characters to change from what the writer specified, into some other configuration. Hopefully that’s going to be fixed, but at the moment, it’s likely to cause unwanted results if the fields are prioritised.

Any which way you divide it, it’s messy.

If I’ve misunderstood your suggestion, I apologise. At least you’re trying to come up with constructive ideas.

Perhaps it would help if some basic instructions for writers were included on the story posting page, to tell them they don’t *have* to fill in all the spaces, and putting in popular characters who play minor roles in their story is just pissing off the readers.

I’m reluctant to lose the extra character slots – for me, three is a good number. But it’s causing a lot of anguish, so I think something has to be done.

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 6:33 pm

Oh yeah! It was the OC and ensemble cast character tags that I was thinking of.

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 6:41 pm

I write genfic, and a lot of my stories feature two or three characters whose importance is pretty well equal.

I also write genfic as well. When picking the order between the characters it doesn’t always come down to which character has the most importance as all three characters have equal roles in the story in genfic. Any priority order would cause many of the genfic stories out there to be eliminated despite the fact the character people are looking for is still a main character.

Oh… and another thing that they could do for the void filter is to have the option for “any random” character as well as “no other character” thus allowing people to look for a story with two characters and yet have one additional character but not including anything that has four or only two. “any random or none” would allow for two and three character stories to show up. It’s advanced programing though.

ShikiKira

08/21/2013 at 9:44 pm

It may not be a major problem for you, but for some of us those other characters that get mixed in take the stories to a whole different area than what we want to read. I don’t want to read stories that have two other main characters that I could care less about. An “All Other Character” option in gets rid of those stories containing extra characters that we deem completely immaterial to what we want to read about.

ShikiKira

08/21/2013 at 9:50 pm

^Did not read the other posts until after I commented. The last post was a direct reply to what Yemi had originally commented.

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 12:56 am

For example, I filtered the Harry Potter archive for fic starring Snape. (I don’t read much HP, but wanted to see how things worked on a big fandom with lots of characters.) After some looking, I found a fic in which Snape was the actual star, even though it was tagged with three other characters. So then I used the “without” filter to exclued one of the characters who, despite being listed on that fic, seemed to have a pretty small role in the story.

So, to make things clear, you filtered for +Snape, -James (to put an example).

Fics with Snape and James get filtered out, because James is in them.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

I’m starting to understand that these so-called “problems” people are reporting just have to do with people not knowing enough Logic. It’s not a fault of the devs.

People just need to learn that if you exclude things, you exclude them. (As dumb as it sounds!)

seila

08/22/2013 at 4:01 am

@bienfait Ah, the weighted character priority idea would not and can not function as a default filter type; it would conflict with the sort by update business. I spaced clarifying that in the huge monster post though. Much facepalm. Heh. And the reordering bug does create a problem, unfortunately.

No harm done. Just tossing ideas around; they’re totally open to being rejected and criticised. . . I wasn’t expecting Muppets though. :P

@yemi I had this feeling that I’d put my foot in my mouth while I read your post. Lol. Anyways, thanks for pointing out the “any other character” business to correspond with the voiding. That was somewhere on my list of things to cover that never found its way into context.

Seeing the void idea properly laid out is a good thing. That does look pretty viable, but I’ve had a similar hunch that it’s a bit more finicky than the general outcry implies.

OC and ensemble tags would be absolutely amazing. And it doesn’t seem like nearly as much trouble as any of the other suggestions. Well, on the programming end at least. I bet it’d be pretty tedious.

And it occurs to me that I haven’t really mentioned my own experiences with the new filters. I’ve had mostly good experiences with them. Most notably, I finally wandered into a category I seldom ventured. The previous issue there was they’ve developed a very, very strange and elaborate culture that requires its own dictionary to grasp. And I’m more interested in a handful of more niche topics that were incredibly difficult to locate before. I’ve turned up a nice little list of potential reads now, and it’s kinda satisfying.

Conversely, I’ve found the most frustration when trying to find single character centric stories. But now that I’ve been reminded, that was an issue before, too, so not much has changed there. Heh. I would very much like it to be simpler though. Hence the idea pitching.

Finding straight up genfic is. . . about the same. I guess? I’m the sort of reader who searches for genfic and takes a peak at any interesting looking romance that just so happen to also appear in my results. I still find a few good stories I wasn’t looking for, and I still spot a lot of things I wouldn’t touch with a yardstick. Sometimes I don’t find what I wanted at all, other times I do. I think that’s pretty normal, even in a library.

We all probably have our own little preferred story hunt methods and superstitions.

And. . . anonlulz strikes with practical rationale. Thanks.

yemi hikari

08/22/2013 at 5:41 am

Finding straight up genfic is. . . about the same. I guess?

It’s actually improved, but only if you use the without filter for the romance genre. The majority of stories you’ll find will be genfic.

TVJunkie199

08/22/2013 at 10:56 am

So, to make things clear, you filtered for +Snape, -James (to put an example).

Fics with Snape and James get filtered out, because James is in them.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Yes, that was my point.

Some people were suggesting the “without” filter as a “fix” for the fact trying to filter for fic starring one character now returns a lot more fic starring other characters than it used to. (As in my Luke Skywalker example.)

Some suggested you could fix this by using a “without” filter to exclude fic tagged with other characters.

However, this isn’t an actual fix. While using a “without” filter would exclude fic starring Character B (like you wanted), it would also end up excluding fic starring Character A. And if you’re looking for fic starring Character A, that’s not the fic you want happening.

So I wasn’t saying the “without” filter didn’t do what it was supposed to do. Just that, because of the way the “without” filters work, they aren’t a fix for other problems.

mikkianne

08/21/2013 at 7:24 am

Every time I change the filters and press apply changes on my iPhone, the page refreshes but it doesn’t go back up to the top to see that now filtered stories. Please fix this.

Oh, and, can you please address the ad blocker situation? You can’t avoid it forever! People deserve answers, even if you are inflicting viruses onto them.

I’ve haven’t had any problems with viruses, yet, but other people are complaining, I think. Ads CAN lead to viruses.

KageNoNeko

08/22/2013 at 9:05 pm

@anonlulz, read up on cross-cutting script.

anonlulz

08/30/2013 at 12:55 am

I know about that, but I haven’t seen anything weird, which is why I asked for concrete proof. So I could investigate.

Why don’t you go fuck elsewhere, Neko?

Brian Runyon

08/21/2013 at 8:55 am

I wish they’d fix whatever bug or glitch is keeping the filters from working for me. I only tned to use the rating and language ones, but when I try to use them with the apply button, t’s stuck together with the canclel one which affles/annoyies me. The adblocker link someone gave out won’t work now either. They aren’t explaining why they did that and I feel they should.

You should install AdBlock Plus, instead of relying on the website’s adblocker. You can download ABP for your browser of choice here: http://adblockplus.org

As for your bug… If I remember you, you’re using a third-party software due to a visual impairment, right? (You never answered me, so I’m only guessing.)

You should state that in your bug reports. Along with OS version, browser version, and any other information you think is relevant.

Note, that if your third-party software is paid for, they might not be able to fix the bugs. Developers need the very same things users have in order to find bugs and fix them. (Hence why they can’t support some devices.)

A couple of blog entries back, they told visually impaired people to use a free software that they can support.

Can you please, PLEASE bring back the alphabetical order when choosing to view ‘All’ in all of the categories?
It’s annoying like hell to just get fandoms stacked according to how many stories have been published instead… What IS the reason for doing that, anyway?
It’s not that different from what the list looks like normally, too. (And IF somebody actually WANTS a list like that, please also consider those of us who DO NOT!)
Thank you.

The ‘sort-by-letter’ is just as arbitrary as ‘sort-by-numbers’. One can still read the title, so no one is asked to click blindly. It does require an attentive clicker, so pay attention to your surroundings.
The only problem with numbers is that they can shift over time, which will change the established order, but not often and probably not as one is trying to click on a category.

They’re talking about how you used to be able to click on the “all” button and you could switch from the popularity sort to the alphabetical sort. While both are arbitrary like you say, each has its advantages and disadvantages.

FF.Net: thank you for fixing the problem with filters on Minimal Javascript consoles, it fixed my problem with the PSP ^_^ even though i already had bookmarked the night before, every filtered through category i needed XD

Can we please do something about the character filters? Having four options makes searching for stories more complicated then they really need to be. The problems most people are running into seem to be…

1.) It’s harder to find stories where the character you are looking for is actually a main character. The reason as to why usually end up being either.

A. People put a character into the character slot, but they rarely actually show up or they only show up for a brief time and then are never seen again.

or B. They are nothing more than side characters that aren’t really focused on, but for whatever reason they where on the list anyway.

2.) When comes to finding stories that involve a couple or involve the friendship/interactions/etc. we are actually having a harder time finding these stories. The reasons for this being either…

A. We put the characters that we want in the search bar, but we end up getting stories where the characters are paired up with someone else.

For example let’s say we go to the Hetalia section and we try to look stories involving the couple England X Prussia. If I put this into the search bar I end up getting a bunch of other stories that have different couples like America X England, N.Italy X Prussia, or some other couple.

Using the without bar is worthless because if he try to exclude a character like say N.Italy I could end up getting rid of stories that do have England X Prussia. However, because N.Italy was on of the characters in the list that story gets taken off even though that is what I really wanted.

Also, since I can’t get rid of every other character in the series off the list I still get stories that involve couples I don’t want. This also works for non-romance stories as well. If I want to find a story that say explores the idea of friendship between two characters you still run into the same problem. It doesn’t matter if they are in the character list I still get slammed with a wave of stories that don’t fit the requirements that I have.

3.) Some people have said it’s not that hard to find stories, but I don’t agree with that thought. Personally, I think this really depends on how many stories you have to dig through and what character/group of characters/couple that you are looking for. If your looking for a story that deals with a rare couple or with a character that is not often written about and the section you have happens to have a lot of stories you are going to be their for awhile because you are looking for something rare in a huge pile of stories.

Even if a character shows rather often in a stories I still have a problem since I still have to dig through a bunch of stories just to find that one story where the character is an actual main character.

Now with a series that doesn’t have very many stories you are not going to have to dig through as many stores so obviously things are going to be easy to find.

So for example if I went looking through the series section of “Jet Grind Radio (which as of right now only has about 340 stories) I’ll have an easier time finding a story based on having a certain couple or having a certain character as the main character since I don’t have many stories that I have to search through.

However, if I go looking around looking for a couple or a story that has this one character as the main character in something like say Kingdom Hearts (which has about 69.9K stories according to my phone) then I am going to have a harder time since I have to dig through so much stuff.

Now since I doubt everyone is going through every section and looking up every character and couple that can possibly exist in a story I don’t think we can just say the searching for stuff is easy in every section here on fanfiction.

From what I have personally seen and experienced some sections are easier to search then others, but they are not all easy to search through. Also, i think the fact that we have so many people saying that they are having problems finding types of stories shows that we do have a problem when it comes to searching for stories.

Long story short, we have a problem with the character filter. For some of us it was easier with only two character filters. We didn’t have as many problems looking stuff up when we had this filter. When you put a character in the filter you where safe to assume that the stories that would come up will have that character as an actual main character. Now we don’t have that problem anymore.

I get why some people want the four character slots I really do, but that doesn’t stop the fact that we are having some huge problems with it. We need to fix this somehow, but I have no idea how.

Should we go back to the two character filter, and only use the four character filter once we fix the problems with it? Maybe, and to be honest it’s what I want to do.

Should we adjust the filters so that we have an easier time finding stuff, but we still get to keep the four character thing? Maybe, but then we run into the question of just how we should adjust the filters.

A lot of people are actually having problems with it, and this something that we can’t ignore.

Thank you, Ann, for pointing those out. More problems added to this new filtering system. Maybe they should drop the characters to three. Nobody needs a fourth really.. I seen stories where they added characters in the section when the story wasn’t even about them.

If your looking for a story that deals with a rare couple or with a character that is not often written about and the section you have happens to have a lot of stories you are going to be their for awhile because you are looking for something rare in a huge pile of stories.

Fair enough on the rare pairing part. This doesn’t though mean that the filter system isn’t working though. As I’ve said, in the majority of cases it is getting good results. When it comes to the rarer stuff it’s always been a hit or miss whether or not you’ll be able to dig stuff out for it that you want. As the site admins make changes to improve the filter what’s going to be more or less a hit or miss among the rarer stuff is going to change. I say this having struggled to search for a rarity before that I’m now able to easily find thanks to the new without filters. It doesn’t mean the old system was better but instead means that the filter system still has a lot of ways it can improve through new features down the line.

Honestly, I seem to be having a harder time finding stuff. I like a few rare couples (or characters) that are not common, but I had a pretty easy time finding my rare stories with the two character filter.

However, now I am having trouble finding these rare couples or character interactions just because they are now lost in a sea of other stories.

Like, for example let’s say I want to find a friendship fic between two characters called Jane and May. Now let’s pretend for a second that fics between these two are rare. Back when we had two character filter when I put these two in the filter I would get stories that involve these two. Mostly because since their where only two character slots it was a pretty safe bet that if they are the main characters (and they are usually interacting with each other in some way). Sure I might have to dig trough some Jane X May fics, but if a friendship fic between these two existed then I would almost always find it(about nine times out of ten).

Now, it’s not so easy for me. Now when I look up stories on these two I might get stories where they are main characters sure, but instead I get May X Dan stories, Jane and Jade friendship story with May in the background, or some other story that while they may have May and Jane in them they are not interacting with each other. Long story short, fanfics where two characters who usually don’t associate with each other do associate with each other can become just as hard to find as rare couple stories.

To be honest I think this might be a case of it depending on what your looking for, how many stories a section has that you have to search through, and other things like that.

The new filter system can possibly be improved, but I honestly don’t know they could do it. A lot of people have been tossing around suggestions as to how we could do this, but usually those ideas come with their own set of problems like how the ‘no other characters’ has it’s own problems. That’s not to say that we can’t improve the filter their has to be some way to do it, but I really don’t know how we could do it.

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 9:27 pm

If you want a friendship fic instead of a romantic relationship I suggest using the without genre filter to remove the romance fics if you aren’t already. Friendship tag could help too, but only if there is a major focus on friendship plot wise. That said, if your choices are that rare that even that isn’t working your best option would be to cross you fingers and hope that the site admins do eventually program a feature that allows you to limit the number of characters.

ElementalBlade

08/21/2013 at 4:23 pm

I found a glitch when using the filters with Harry Potter crossovers.
Only around 15-20 of the Harry Potter characters are showing up in the character slots. I’ve only tried with the different X-Men crossovers so far, but the error is consistent each time, though the number of characters may vary.

OK, I’m getting the same thing no matter what type of Harry Potter crossover I try… The number of characters seems to depend on how many are in each fandom… For example, Harry Potter and X-Men will have much fewer characters showing up in the boxes than, say, Harry Potter and Pokémon (because Pokémon has way more characters in the category).
I’ve determined that not all the characters show up in any box though, not just the Harry Potter side of things.
The issue seems to be only with the crossovers though… When I’m looking at a series on its own, the character boxes are fine.

The site admins changed it so that only the characters tags that are actually used by a writer are used, which makes it easier for the readers when looking through crossovers for fandoms with larger numbers of characters as they can tell that there are no stories where that character is tagged. If a story is added to the category with said character then the character tag will show up.

@yemi wrote: The third thing I’m going to say is while it is true that the filter system is meant to find what you want, it isn’t meant to find only what you want and nothing else. Certain people got overly used to the fact they used to be able to find only what they want that now they’re throwing a fit because its not the same.

I totally missed this earlier, but caught it when re-reading to check something.

Right here we are told that the filters went from doing what they are supposed to do (Certain people got overly used to the fact they used to be able to find only what they want) and now the results are less than precise but we should shut up about it (now they’re throwing a fit because its not the same). Seriously? After admitting to this, you still wonder why people would complain? I’m still not saying it’s necessary to change back to 2 characters – which is unlikely to happen – but there is a problem when the filters make some things worse than before.

When the length filter was showing fics of 19k when the ‘greater than 20k’ filter was used, it was considered as an error or glitch or bug (whatever you want to call it) and it was fixed fairly quickly.

I kind of do think going back to 2 character slots would be better. Because right now, four character slots is causing way too many problems. And all of the “solutions” I’ve seen and thought about myself, have three things in common.

1. They wouldn’t actually fix the problems caused by the four slots.

2. Sound kind of complicated and hard to implement, whether by readers, writers, or FF.Net.

3. Would cause a bunch of new problems, and those new problems would have to be fixed.

And, honestly, the only way I see the four slots working is if the filter was somehow smart enough (or magical enough) to be able to evaluate whether or not a story is tagged with the right characters. It would also have to be able to tell what you mean when you exclude a character with the “without” filter. (Do you mean you don’t want any stories tagged with that character, or you just don’t want stories where they are the star.)

Just the thought of trying to sort out the four character slot system so it works as well as the old system makes my head hurt. And seems so unnecessary when the old system already worked pretty well, and didn’t come with all of the complications.

Yes… the without other characters option as well as relationship type filter wouldn’t solve a lot of the problems people are having. (I’m being sarcastic there.) The majority of the site members are in fact tagging their stories correctly contrary to the claims people are making on the blog.

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 1:02 am

I love how people say “this causes problems”, but they never elaborate beyond “well, I’m not getting what I want”, “I get too many slash/gen/het/whatever fics” blah blah blah

Basically, problems = waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

yemi hikari

08/21/2013 at 5:52 pm

I clearly stated that the filter system wasn’t supposed to give the one-hundred percent or near one-hundred percent results that certain people have come to expect in the first place. When I first came to the site the results were a lot less biased towards one particular groups interests and you could expect to find the percentages that we’re now finding.

When a filter system gives that precise of results to one group of people another group is going to lose out as the results aren’t going to be precise for them at all. A filter system that gives biased results like that isn’t doing what it is supposed to be doing, but a filter system that gives more balanced results is the one that is actually functioning the way it is supposed to be.

I copied your post exactly, so what I have is what you wrote. If I set filters for certain results, I expect the results to reflect those filters. If another person wants something else, they will change something about the filters to reflect that.

I don’t expect 100% accuracy. I have not in any way, shape or form said I expect 100% accuracy. If you read my other post, I even clearly said that in my Severitis search with the old filter system, I did have many stories that weren’t what I was searching for, but that they DID reflect what I put in my filters (I put HP and SS as the main characters, I got results of both mentor and slash, a very few completely wrong fics where the authors tagged wrong, but mostly HP and SS were the main characters).

Now, let’s say that there are a total of 10 possible characters other than HP and SS (there are many more than 10, I’m sure you’ll agree) I will get fics where A is matched with C for 10 different characters, then you multiply that by A matched with D; B matched with C and B matched with D. Can you imagine all the fics that are not what we want? A result that brought back at least 15 pages before, will now be considerably larger (and I agree it will be worse or this bad in future as more fics are added with the 4 slots filled in). Yes, this fandom is one of the extremes, but that doesn’t mean that the problem isn’t there.

No matter how many ways you try to deny it, if you’re honest you will acknowledge this. I know that in some cases, your searches are working for you (not any specific you, but a general you). Fantastic, congratulations. That doesn’t mean that any opposing views are to be disregarded. Perhaps these big problems are only apparent in the larger fandoms. That doesn’t mean they should be disregarded either. I can only hope that some suggestion will come up where perhaps it will work as it should for everyone. Maybe everyone will gain, but we will all perhaps give up a bit. Right now, however, it is chaotic.

I took your words in the context they were given. That the results should not give only what people want. You took my answer out of context, or rather, just completely ignored everything I had to say that didn’t agree with your stance. I did not say it should be 100% accurate or even near 100% accurate. You threw that in there.

I am willing to look at both sides of the issue, but you are not. There was a problem with the previous filters according to some (or even many) authors. I’m a reader, and had no troubles except wishing and asking for more length filter options or sort by word count if possible. I know all too well that just because I had no trouble doesn’t mean there wasn’t any. The filters changed and suddenly there are MANY problems. Problems that will increase as the number of fics with all 4 slots filled in grows.

I can live with the huge amount of fics that do not relate AT ALL to the filters that I chose, even if they are incredibly annoying. I would prefer not to, but what can I do. What I won’t live with is:

1) Having someone tell me or others that we should be forced to read stories we don’t like — those are your words and if I have to I will go back and search for that post to copy it.

2)That any problems are only imaginary or nitpicky — I will agree that some of the people ARE incredibly nitpicky, but don’t group everyone in the same basket!

3) That filters should not give only expected results. As far as I’m concerned, filters and searches should bring back results that are as accurate as possible. I’m not saying 100% accurate, no search can ever be 100%, just as accurate as possible.

In my example of Severitis, let’s say with the old filters the mentor aspect was 50% and the slash aspect was 40%, then the completely inaccurate fics where the author didn’t tag correctly of 15% (these figures are completely made up, no clue what real percentage would be and can’t check now). For what I actually wanted – Severitis – the accuracy was 50%. The HP&SS accuracy, however, was 90%, because the main characters were correct. Now the percentages are spread across several characters that have no bearing on Severitis or on HP&SS slash. it will be HP and every other available character, and SS with every other available character showing up.

Actually, I think we might still have problems even if we do add without other characters option. The relationship type filter would be nice though.

The more I think about how the without other characters option, the more I wonder how that would work. Let’s say we did have that option, and we decided to use it. Since most people end up using up all four character bars (regardless of if a character is a main character or not) wouldn’t we just end up getting rid of stories that we want? I mean think about it.

Let’s say I want to find a story that have two characters named Alice and Bob as the main characters. I put those two in the filters, and I make the rest of the filters ‘without other characters’. However, a lot of people seem to have taken up the habit of filling out all four character slots. If we chose ‘without other characters’ then the filters will get rid of stories that have other characters in the other slots even if they do have Bob and Alice as main characters. So what do we do then?

Although the ‘without characters’ option might work differently then that. If it doesn’t work that way then never mind, but if it does work the way I think it’s supposed to work then we have issues.

The relationship type filter would honestly be easier for them to program. The other option would work mind you, but it could take months of programming just to get it to work right. You’re also right about how it could eliminate other stories that people want. Which would mean even more programing for a “any character slot” as well as “any or none” character slots.

@Ann – or Alice and Bob’s story might be told from the first person viewpoint of their daughter Elizabeth, which would mean it was a genuine Alice and Bob story, but the author might feel that Elizabeth, as the narrator and interpreter of her parents’ relationship, is actually the main character, and put all three of them. I think that would be fair enough, but with the “no other” character field, that story might well slip between the cracks.

I agree that authors should use the extra fields with discretion, and in the fandom I inhabit they are doing so – I’ve only seen a couple of examples of characters being listed who perhaps shouldn’t have been. But it appears as though it’s more of a problem in other fandoms.

I concur, it was bad enough that it was changed from 3-days to 1-day ad-blocker but to take it away completely was unnecessary. The filtering system I could probably get used to it. But for now the main problem would be the Ad-Blocker. Please bring it back.

How does having more ways for people to log onto the site justify getting rid of anonymous reviews? It still comes down to whether a person wants to make an account or not as well as whether or not they want to actually sign into the account at the point in time.

Because if they have plenty of options to log in from email to FB to whatever, there shouldn’t be any issue with logging in and taking responsibility for whatever they write to authors. The guest option allows them to spew whatever hateful vitriol they like, It also means no way to report them so FFn can deal with bullies. Authors have no way to block anonymous reviewers anymore, so their only option is to have to review all of the hatefulness and delete it themselves.

I have no problem with letting people read whatever they want as guests, but FFn needs to do something about the bullying and hatefulness that has only exponentially multiplied since the change to allow guests to leave reviews.

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 1:04 am

I agree with yemi.

If you can’t handle anonymous reviews, mod them and reject them as soon as they come up.

seila

08/22/2013 at 1:57 am

I review anonymously sometimes. Not often, not to flame, and neither because I was too lazy to login.

I usually do this when either I do not want a response or I’m pointing out some dreadfully foolish mistake an author made and haven’t seen enough of his writing to determine if he’ll accept it gracefully or spitefully. My logic behind this is that the author can quietly fix his mistake if he so desires and erase the evidence. Otherwise I feel obligated to write a follow up review if he repaired the issue, and that’s not something I particularly enjoy.

. . . Maybe my logic is completely silly.

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 2:03 am

I agree with that, seila.

Especially since *some* authors get embarrassed and want to spam your own stories with hate speech.

Smartee

08/22/2013 at 3:00 am

It was an option and now it’s not. It’s like another one of an author’s freedoms has been taken away. Writers really enjoyed the disable anonymous review function. The ffnet admins never said anything about authors abusing that function, so I don’t see why it was taken away. All it did was upset the writers. I don’t understand what they were being punished for.

I brought this point up before, but all I receive in response was “well, I have separate accounts for posting stories and submitting reviews, so it wouldn’t matter if I’m forced to sign in.” In which case, no one has to worry about “authors spamming my own stories” in retaliation.

If an author doesn’t want your anonymous review anyway, then they don’t deserve it. It’s better to spend your time on an author who wants your input. Most reviewers don’t review the stories anyway. They just pick out typos or grammar. That’s fine and all, but some things are regional such as “dreamt” and “dreamed.” Reviewers shouldn’t be setting out to embarrass the writer anyways.

Ironically, I probably wouldn’t get any reviews without the anonymous review option. I rely heavily on those secretive reviewers. However, I won’t deny any author’s right to disable it. That’s just silly. We can’t ALL agree on EVERYTHING, so don’t take away options that we had. It should be reinstated. If you don’t like it, then don’t chose that option. Don’t dictate on what everyone else should do.

yemi hikari

08/22/2013 at 1:16 pm

While it is within an author’s rights to not get flamed it is not within their right to reject a legit review. It’s proper etiquette for an author to accept any non flame review that comes their way. The anonymous readers are still readers on this site and their opinions and thoughts do matter.

As for upsetting the writers… the majority of the writers its upset are the ones who turned off anonymous reviews because they didn’t want any form of criticism what-so-ever and don’t know the difference between a flame and critique is. While they don’t deserve positive reviews they do deserve negative ones as reviews aren’t just for the writers, they’re also for the other readers.

I’m also going to point out that allowing no anonymous reviews as an option led to a paranoia that the anonymous flaming where the writer spams your story was quite frequent when it has not. In the whole time I’ve been here I’ve only been spam flamed by anonymous reviews once. It stopped when I put my foot down in an author’s note and told them their behavior was immature and that I knew of plenty who could verify that the stuff they were spouting off wasn’t accurate, nor that I was going to put up with such nonsense.

On top of this, as Rouge Mudblood says in another reply else where… anonymous flames are a lot easier to deal with then signed ones. And no… blocking someone won’t stop them from leaving signed reviews, not when they can just create a sock puppet account. Removing the anonymous review feature will in the long run result in more sock puppeting.

My issue is not with the anonymous ones, which can be deleted en masse on the 3rd day if necessary.

My issue is with nonexistent admin response to flame reviews left on logged-in accounts, including one that has threatened to hack those who outed a plagiarist. Which has already been e-mailed to the admins several times.

@ Rogue Yes Ms Honey who now says her threat was just a joke and then is trying to deny she even made the threat when its still on the plagiarist story.

@ Yemi: Yes some authors are that way, but there are many more who are flamed. Flaming as in attacking their parenting skills, told they are going to hell because two guys in their story are dating, or other disgusting things that are in no stretch of the imagination are a critique. Are some authors thin skinned, oh most definitely. I’ve had to talk down a few authors because of that; but when the attacks are personal and have nothing to do with the story itself, then that is unacceptable. Why should the authors have to delete this hatefulness. FFn should be able to turn the function back on that was already there, make guests login to review, or actually DO something about the flaming situation. Yes there are going to be sock puppets but, while I don’t know the coding involved, think they could ban emails or IP addresses of those who abuse the system.

yemi hikari

08/23/2013 at 3:44 am

Apparently you missed the point I made that it is better to be able to delete the flames you get then have to wait months for the site admins to delete signed flames. There is no telling how many accounts a person will create before the site admins get to the problem and give this person an IPban. In the long run you can still report anonymous reviews to the site admins as each review has a number attached that you can find in your e-mail and you don’t have to wait for them to delete the reviews. Having experience with sock-puppets … the reviews they leave tend to be far worse then those left anonymously as well.

Yemi, I was trying to use that friendship thing as an example that finding some stories with the new filter is harder then how it used to be. However, I probably should have came up with a better example then the friendship thing so that’s my bad.

To put a really long story short and to get right to the point the four character slot thing is making it really hard to find stories that people actually want. I have said my many reasons as why I am having difficulty, and many other people have said why they are having problems so having me say what the problems are over and over again is getting us no where.

We are literately talking circles around each other. I don’t have anything more to add to the matter (as of right now anyway). It’s obvious your not changing your opinion about this, and I’m not going to change mine. We can argue about this until the cows come home, but I don’t think either one of us will change our minds.

I just have this to say.

I read in a post that you where not having trouble, but as I said before some of us are having lots of problems when it comes to finding stories due to characters being filtered wrong, lot’s of stories to dig through, etc.

When it comes to searches the four character slots thing is a real pain, and the more people try to figure out how to improve it the more problems seem to pop up.

I honestly think we would be better going back to the two character filter.

If we can find a way to make it so that the four character search thing isn’t as big of a problem then by all means do it. However, no one seems to have a real good idea of how to do this. Most of the ideas that have been tossed about come with their own huge amount of problems.

The new filters have it’s benefits I am not denying this, but the fact of the matter is the new filter is very flawed in a number of ways. It needs fixing or changing, and a lot of the problems that other people have with this filter where not even an issue with the old filter.

If that wasn’t the case then we wouldn’t have so many people complaining about it. Also, don’t tell me that people are complaining because they don’t like change. While it is true their are some people who do not like change their are some people who are actually having problems with this new filter regardless of if you want to acknowledge this or not.

That’s all I have to say on the matter. I know this won’t change your mind about the filters, but it’s what I think either way.

If you can’t find stories, it’s because you spend so much time complaining about the new filters here.

All I keep hearing is “the filters have problems”, but NO ONE says what those problems are. Just that they don’t see what they want to see. Well, that’s NOT a problem or a glitch or a bug.

I use more than one browser, and I get the same results every time. I click on the buttons and they do what they’re supposed to. I see stories with the characters I asked for, with the genres I asked for, and those that I have excluded don’t appear, AS EXPECTED.

There are absolutely NO PROBLEMS with the results, whatsoever.

You just want to take away something from people (that they have ASKED for, for YEARS) just because you don’t know how to use it.

I have been messing around with the filters as have other people. The snape experiment being an example, and my own findings with searching around a smaller section or bigger section.

I’m not saying it’s glitched or bugged I am saying that it is flawed. Also, I have pointed out that most of the ideas we have to fix things have come with their own set of problems. The ‘no other characters option’ for example comes with some problems that we have discussed. The problems that it causes could be fixed, but of course it will require a lot of work.

Also, while yes I would prefer to go back to two characters it doesn’t have to happen. If they could find a way to fix the four characters filter so that it can address the problems that some people have been having then great that’s all we really want in the end.

I have seen the posts that you put up, and I know that it doesn’t matter what I or other people say to you. You are set in your ways, and you know what that’s fine. The four character slots do have their benefits so obviously you don’t want that gone.

I’m not arguing with you over this. It’s just turning into one huge internet argument that won’t go anywhere.

Also, I’m not sure why you get so worked up about this. At the end of the day it seems like saying any complaints that we put here is the equivalent of yelling at a brick wall. I honestly don’t think anything is going to change, and your going to keep the four character slot so why get so angry? Nothing is going to change and as more updates come up this will eventually be forgotten.

I hope you have a nice day.

anonlulz

08/22/2013 at 1:06 am

Keep going, FFN devs, you are the best!

Forgive the ungrateful users, for they don’t know what they are doing!

Herro, and I really have one topic to ask upon here (technically a mixture of two). It’s been awhile since I last used FFn really, so I use my 3DS, to come see what’s new. Btw, after seeing the updated filter system, it’s a real nice improvement from before, not so sure why anybody should be complaining… But, even though it’s stated to have support for the 3DS browser, I cannot go through all the filter settings in some areas of the site (more specifically Pokémon). The 3DS browser can only display a drop list up to 200 entries, and the character list is most definitely larger than this. So, any suggestions for an alternate way of setting the filters for these long lists? I’ll even take a text file showing the values for these long lists so I could just modify the url to get my search results. Sorry if I don’t make much sense ^-^’

While I’m here, I’d like to add that users who are blocked shouldn’t be able to follow or fav stories and authors of those who blocked them. It’s bad enough that they can still harass us “anonymously,” but it’s even worse to get an alert that they’re following you as well.

Xing or however you spell it ahs an email? Cool. I’d like to try to find out form the admins what the bug or glitch is that’s keeping me from using the filters the right way and why they removed the adblocker apparently without telling anyone.

Javascript and ‘aging’ browsers… My browser (last updated July 2013) doesn’t support the JavaScript on this site. Yet the mobile site works fine… except that I can’t leave reviews.
I can ‘follow’ stories and forum threads, send PMs and post to forums, I can use the latest new fancy filtering system — but when I type reviews into the site I can’t actually submit them, because somebody has made the relevant ‘Go’ button JS-dependent. Honestly, is it that difficult to implement a basic text-box form… like this one? I can’t help assuming it’s an accidental oversight…

Not much point, I’m afraid — they’ll just say that it’s a browser and OS they’ve never heard of and they only support a fixed range of devices…

Never mind that the same results apply to anybody accessing the site with any device or from any system where JavaScript either does not exist (e.g. text-reading browsers for the blind) or is disabled for security purposes: it’s something that’s easy to test for.

anonlulz

08/30/2013 at 12:59 am

Well, then, why are you complaining if you’re not going to help them fix the problem?

FFS, moronic people.

Brian Runyon

08/30/2013 at 8:31 am

Meanwhile, they still haven’t explained whatever but or glitch is meessing with h filters when It ry to use them and therye’s stil no adblocker back.

Waah huhu I Cannot access fanfiction anymore.everytime I tried to go to site using my mobile phone blackberry an error occured like this: 403 Forbidden
Access to this resource on the server is denied!
Powered By LiteSpeed Web Server.
What to do so I can access fanfiction again?